----- Original Message -----
From: "J Y S Czhang" <czhang23@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2003 4:29 AM
Subject: Re: "defense of wilderness" (wasRe: lexicon)
> In a message dated 2003:06:03 10:39:12 AM, Andreas writes:
>
> >> >What are we meaning by "wilderness" here?
> >
> >> I mean Nature :) And we being animals too, we are part of Nature
> >> tho' many still think we are somehow separate (& above) like those who
have
> >> in the recent historical past.
> >
> >Next question; what do we mean by "Nature"? :-)
>
> LOL. Good question. It seems to be word that has mutated semantically
> quite often.
>
> >I've never been able to understand the "humanity as part of nature"
> >vs "humanity vs nature" debate.
>
> Me, too ;) Well, I "understand" it but don't know what to make of it
;)
> It's quite foreign to me.
>
> > I mean, _obviously_ we are part of the
> >cosmos, as are flowers, supernovae and computers. Equally obviously,
there
> are
> >parts of the cosmos that are, well, antithetical to human existence, and
have
> >to be controled/avoided/defeated if we want to survive (and most of us
> >apparently does want to).
>
> The above statement - especially the part that says "antithetical to
> human existence" - still partakes of the Human versus Nature
conflict/dichotomy.
The armour of a rhino is surely to defend itself against Nature, but none
would argue it is not part of nature.